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November 30, 2012 FCW.COM
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Several of the 70-odd newly elected
representatives and senators who will
be on Capitol Hill for the next Con-
gress are already familiar to agency
of cials. Four of them have federal
government experience:
• Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who
won Republican Sen. Scott Brown s
seat, served as chairwoman of the
Congressional Oversight Panel for
the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
She is largely credited with creating
the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau.
• Rep.-elect Tammy Duckworth
(D-Ill.), a military veteran who was
wounded during Operation Iraqi
Freedom, became President Barack
Obama s assistant secretary for pub-
lic and intergovernmental affairs at
the Department of Veterans Affairs
in 2009. There, she oversaw the VA s
work to end homelessness among
veterans and pushed the department
to focus on initiatives that benefit
women veterans and increase acces-
sibility at the VA s Of ce of Online
Communications.
• Rep.-elect Keith Rothfus (R-Pa.)
worked at the Department of Home-
land Security from 2006 to 2007. He
created and then led the department s
Center for Faith-Based and Com-
munity Initiatives (now the Center
for Faith-Based and Neighborhood
Partnerships).
• Rep.-elect Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.)
served nearly six years in the Navy as
a judge advocate general of cer. During
his naval service, he supported opera-
tions in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and
deployed to Iraq as an adviser to the
Navy SEALs during the 2007 troop surge.
There is tech experience to be
found in the new class as well. Rep.-
elect Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) was a
vice president at Microsoft, served as
president of start-up Nimble Technol-
ogy and helped launch Drugstore.com.
Rep.-elect Steve Daines (R-Mont.) was
an executive at RightNow Technolo-
gies, a cloud computing rm recently
acquired by Oracle.
Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) once
worked at Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory as a physicist and particle
accelerator designer. And Rep. Matt
Salmon (R-Ariz.) is a former telecom-
munications executive and onetime
president of COMPTEL, a trade asso-
ciation for communications service
providers.
Foster and Salmon also share a
different sort of relevant experience:
Both have been members of Congress
before. Salmon served from 1994 to
2000 and then decided against seeking
a fourth term, while Foster served a
single term before losing in 2010 to
current Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.).
New lawmakers boast agency, tech experience
FCW CALENDAR
11/30 Online elections
The next Tech@
State gathering will explore
the digital aspects of recent
U.S. elections and how
technology is reshaping the
electoral process. Tech@
State:ElecTech, Washington,
D.C. http://is.gd/cenabi
12/10 HealthIT
Former Senate
Majority Leader Tom Daschle
tops the list of participants for
this Bipartisan Policy Center
discussion on the use of
online tools and technologies,
including mobile, as a central
component of high-quality and
cost-effective care. Improving
Quality and Reducing Costs in
Health Care, Washington, D.C.
http://is.gd/dufudi
12/11 Geospatial
intelligence
The Defense Department's
National Geospatial-Intelligence
Agency is hosting a forum to
discuss its "overarching strategy
to collaborate with industry over
a sustained period of time." NGA
Collaboration Forum Outreach
Event, Spring eld, Va. http://
is.gd/TgRV8Z
12/12 Big data
Amazon Web
Services Vice President
Teresa Carlson, Census
Bureau CTO Avi Bender and
NOAA CIO Joseph Klimavicz
are among the speakers at
this brie ng on the ways in
which big data is affecting
government organizations
and will continue to do so in
the future. FCW Executive
Brie ng, Washington, D.C.
http://is.gd/igevaz
is the average cost
per minute of down-
time after an attack
on public-sector sites,
the Ponemon Institute
says
$15,447
Tammy Duckworth Elizabeth Warren